More than charcoal
by skyewardfitzsimmonsphilinda
Summary: Alternate ending to 3 x 09.
"What does it mean?" Lincoln's eyes were glazed; unfocused as he tried to gain his bearings in the dark around them.

Octavia wrapped his arm across her shoulders so he could lean against him where they sat together, backs against the wall. "It means peace, _ai hodnes_. It means peace."

Lincoln sagged against her. "My people"—

"Safe. I kept them safe."

"How?" The word came out of his mouth ragged; his eyes still half-closed.

Octavia was silent for a long moment. "What do you remember?"

Lincoln groaned. "My people—Octavia… Pike"—he dragged himself upright and looked down at her. "Pike was going to kill them if I didn't turn myself over."

"Shh," Octavia whispered, burying her head into his shoulder. She breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of his skin, treasuring each beat of his heart next to hers; each beat that said _alive alive alive_. "I got them out. All of them."

He leaned into her. "Pike's men. Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head, and his fingers moved to brush hair from her forehead—his instinct, even as dazed as he was—as gently and absently as he had ever done. "I knocked you out," she said, not bothering to sound apologetic. "That's when I broke our people out."

"But?"

"But nothing," she said.

"Where are we?" he murmured into her hair. "It's dark."

"On our way home," Octavia said, and her voice could not break; it could _not_ or he would know—

Lincoln nodded, trust and weariness and the aftereffects of the serum she had given him dulling his awareness of the nature of the darkness around them.

"After everything," she murmured. "After war. After it's all over. What will we do?"

He sighed into her skin. "After we have given enough to our people, we'll go…we'll go to the sea," he said. "Just you and me, and we'll whisper _yo gonplei ste odon_ every morning so that we don't ever forget."

 _Your fight is over_.

"We'll build a house there," Octavia added, a smile twisting across her face. "Together."

"And you'll work too hard, and I'll have to wrap your hands to keep them from bleeding," Lincoln smiled slightly, a slow, quiet thing that had decades ahead of it. "Just like when you trained with Indra."

"We'll go spear fishing together," Octavia continued. "And the spring floods will never be strong enough to wash us away."

"We'll pick berries, too," Lincoln told her, drawing her closer into his side. " _Gyosing_ berries. They grow next to the sea, blue as a storm."

"You'll plant me a garden," Octavia said, nearly choking on a sob. "Lilies and irises and vegetables and vines to spring up around our house as it grows old with us." Dear _god_ , the word _old_ was tearing fault lines through her tired body.

" _Ai hodnes_ ," Lincoln's voice sharped in concern. _My love_. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Octavia lied. "It's just—that life feels so far away."

His hand cupped her face; his thumb caught her falling tear. " _Octavia kom trikru_ ," he whispered. "You just have to close your eyes."

They were silent for a long moment, drawing strength from each other.

"Close your eyes," he repeated. "And you'll be able to smell the lilies I'll plant for you, and I—I will paint you in more than charcoal."

Octavia laughed, a small choked sounds that came out like hope. "In color."

"In color," he assented. "I'll paint the way the morning comes through the window of our house and dances on your skin like this." His fingers traced a pattern down her face. "You'll have sea breeze in your hair and I'll kiss you like"—

" _This_ ," she breathed, and then she was; kissing him long and lasting and desperate, _desperate_ to remain in this final precious moment. "I see it," she whispered. " _Yu laik ai hom_."

A door in the darkness was thrown open, flooding the room with harsh, unnatural light.

The rest was a blur—Pike and his guards and their guns and shouting, pronouncing a death sentence on Octavia Kom Trikru, aider and abettor—except for Lincoln and every shade of grief and disbelief and devastation that fled across his face.

And the words, heard only in fractures, spoken by the bastard across from them—" _She freed your people. She demanded to die with you. Sentenced to death_ "—and the way the heartbreak showed on Lincoln's face at each words.

Octavia wrapped her fingers through Lincoln's, and the rest did not matter—the guards, the march through Arkadia, the muddy space beside the prison where her knees hit the earth with the sound of a cannon.

Somewhere, someone was shouting _she's just a kid_ and someone else shouting _this isn't right_ and another saying _they aren't the enemy_ and she leaves behind a revolution among her people; leaves behind nothing but that and a brother in the distance, screaming—a brother too far to stop what happens next, too close to turn his eyes away.

Octavia Blake reached out a strong, free hand and cupped Lincoln's face. " _Yu gonplei ste odon, ai hodnes._ "

It was all that mattered—his eyes, not the mud on their knees or the sky that wept above them or the hundred faces of grief and horror and night that watched them—

and then there was a _crack_ and a fall and nothing more than charcoal.


End file.
